Sometimes, the wrong gift turns out right

Manvel's Jalen Preston, a Texas A&M recruit, cannot make a final touchdown in the last second of the Class 5A Division I state championship game against Highland Park at AT&T Stadium.

Manvel's Jalen Preston, a Texas A&M recruit, cannot make a final...

Picture the 10-year-old boy jumping out of bed and heading straight for the living room. Watch his eyes, and how quickly they scan the area around the tree and zoom in on the package with the perfect shape, that rounded top he can discern even through the wrapping paper.

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Notice him smiling, because he knows exactly what is inside - or thinks he does, anyway.

Picture the mother, nervously fidgeting with the video camera, dreading what is about to happen next. She knows the boy expects a football helmet. And the night before, she wrapped a football helmet.

But thanks to the incompetence of someone filling orders for the 1987 Sears Wish Book catalog, the football helmet she wrapped was not silver with a blue star, like the boy so desperately wanted. Instead, it was blue with a spiraled yellow horn.

Sports

“Oh,” he says, in a moment of dejection forever preserved by home video. “A Rams helmet.”

This happened three decades ago, and to some readers, it might explain a few things. Later in life, the boy would be asked more than once when he got to be such a sports cynic, and maybe that was his first lesson in the importance of seeing before believing.

At the time, his parents explained the helmet could be returned through the mail, and Sears would be able to send the right one within four to six weeks, but that did not help much. After all, football season would be over by then.

This was, in his judgment, the worst Christmas ever.

But over the years he would change his mind about that, and it wasn’t long before the helmet situation was completely moot. By the time he was 12, his father had declared he never would support the Cowboys again, thanks to that carpet-bagging showboat Jerry Jones, and so the boy followed suit.

This incident, too, eventually proved to be invaluable. With no rooting interests, the boy and his father were able to watch games without caring who won, with the freedom to call either coach an idiot.

A future as a newspaper columnist, it seemed, was preordained.

And so it came to pass that an odd combination of all of these memories raced through the boy’s mind this past Friday night, when he watched a television broadcast of the UIL Class 5A Division I state championship game at AT&T Stadium.

In terms of sheer drama, it turned into one of the most compelling sporting events of the year. Highland Park, the posh Dallas enclave home to the nation’s wealthiest parent-teacher association, was engaged in a spirited back-and-forth affair with Manvel, a Houston suburb loaded with future college stars, and neither offense could be stopped.

Highland Park’s star player, of course, was a swaggering quarterback named John Stephen Jones, who happens to be the grandson of the Cowboys’ aforementioned owner. He traded dazzling highlight-reel plays with Manvel wide receiver Jalen Preston, an awe-inspiring blend of size, speed and savvy committed to Texas A&M.

When Manvel held a 10-point lead in the final five minutes, it looked like it was going to be a feel-good story. Highland Park, after all, had won the title last year. Its coach wears a suit and tie and a fedora. Its fans are unaccustomed to disappointment. Manvel, meanwhile, was closing in on its first title in its history.

But then the younger Jones ran for a touchdown, and his team orchestrated a perfect onside kick, which was followed by Jones’ fourth touchdown pass of the night.

Still, Manvel had one last chance to win, but when Preston hauled in a last-second heave near the goal line, he was tackled one yard short.

In the middle of the postgame pandemonium, three nights before Christmas, tears filled Preston’s eyes. He knew exactly what he wanted, and believed he had it, only to find out he was wrong.

But maybe there will be a day, 30 years from now, when he will come to think of that night differently. Maybe he will come to realize that the holidays are not nearly as interesting when everything goes as planned.

Maybe he will decide that delayed gratification is better than the immediate variety.

And maybe someday he will decide that the time he got what he didn’t want turned out to be his fondest Christmas memory ever.